The winner of the Subject Centre's undergraduate student essay competition 2010 is Daniel Finch-Race, a 3rd year Modern European Languages student at the University of Edinburgh. Daniel’s winning entry is a promotional article aimed at encouraging school pupils to study languages, linguistics or area studies at university.

‘Marketing and the Media in France’ is a final-year undergraduate module which integrates the development of key or transferable skills with the acquisition of subject-specific knowledge (of marketing and the advertising media in France) and the development of all four language skills. This case study provides an outline of the module, its aims and assessment methods, introduces some of the resources used to support the module and reviews student responses regarding the challenges and benefits of integrating key skills into a final-year module as they prepare to make the transition into the world of work.

What is the place of linguistics and sociolinguistics in the undergraduate French programme? For 20 years, I taught a second-year undergraduate module (10 weeks, 2 hours/ week) on ‘The making of the modern French language’, chosen by about 20 students each year. The course was modified to take account of research, seminar discussions, students’ work, and feedback questionnaires. This description of the course is intended as an encouragement to colleagues teaching French to undergraduates to consider offering a course on similar (or different!) lines, or to consider including in an existing course some of the topics and/or approaches outlined here.

French as a foreign language and the Common European Framework of Reference for languages
This paper considers the position which British GCSE and 'A' level are given in the Common European Framework (CEFR). The vocabulary sizes of learners taking these exams are considered in relation to the vocabulary information and wordlist sizes included in the CEFR documentation. The vocabulary knowledge of learners appears small, very small, in comparison to the levels anticipated by the Framework, and very small compared to learners of other languages at the same levels. Learners in Britain appear to lack the vocabulary knowledge necessary to carry out the skills indicated for the levels they are expected to attain.

Bridging the Gap: University of Manchester
The University of Manchester's Bridging the Gap project to help students transition between GCSE, As and A2 level is described. Various forums and committees were set up to identify gaps in their respective syllabuses and events days were run at a Language College to help fill these gaps. Feedback on the events was good and it is hoped that this type of event will encourage more students to take languages at university level.

An interim assessment of the introduction of accredited portfolios in introductory French courses
This paper reports on the introduction of accredited portfolios into an ab initio French language course at the University of Stirling. These were introduced to help students progress from a teacher-led learning environment into one in which a more autonomous approach was required. Student feedback was mainly positive, whilst a slight improvement in grades was also reported. However, some areas of difficulty would benefit from further development.

Yes, but is PEL the same as ELP?
In September 2003, Leeds Metropolitan University started delivering a new French specialist route on its BA(Hons) Primary Education and was paired with the IUFM of Montpellier in France. As lecturers from both institutions started collaborating together, we decided to look into the use of the Common European Framework and in particular the European Language Portfolio (ELP) as tools offering an element of commonality between France and the UK. How is the use of these interpreted differently in both countries? How much do these interpretations reflect a different approach to language learning and the means to achieve that learning?

Materials Bank Item

French Urban Space helps you read and study the Paris novels of the nineteenth century. Its key aims are to improve your reading strategies for French literature. The activities show you how to generate essay questions, develop arguments and create your own original material for writing papers. You can work through the whole package over a semester whilst reading the French novels of the nineteenth century, guided by your lecturer.

These online materials are a set of resources that encourage undergraduates to engage with area studies through French language and through French literary studies. The materials developed do not simply use web technologies to add interactivity to the learning objects (LOs) but also equip humanities students with an introductory understanding of the emerging technologies of mark-up for handling digital texts in the Web 2.0 era of The Semantic Web.

OpenLearn modern languages courses
The Open University has published several online language learning material on its OpenLearn website. The French module 'En ville' will suit absolute beginners while 'Bien dans sa peau' will suit those with some previous knowledge. The Spanish modules are available for beginners ('Espacios públicos'), upper intermediate ('La historia piedra a piedra'), and advanced ('Perspectivas porteñas' and 'Con mis propias manos'). The German materials include a unit at upper intermediate level about family life in Germany ('Lebensumstaende'), and at advanced level about regions and political structures ('Regionen, Traditionen und Geschichte').

This development project was to design an introductory set of electronic exercises for Year 2 undergraduates approaching medieval literature for the first time. The reusable learning objects provide a phenomenological approach to the material existence of the book as it appeared in the early 1400s in France. The aim of the objects is to communicate the state of book- and script technologies at that time. The resource pack contains interactive exercises for use on the mobile smart-phone or PDA.

French: Language resources
A gateway to French learning resources, produced by the School of Modern Languages, University of Salford. It contains links which include Contemporary Society, Culture and Business French.

French: RealFrench.net
The realfrench.net website is a collection of free online French-teaching resources developed by the Department of Languages and the Department of Information and Communications, MMU. It includes a large number of interactive vocabulary games, grammar notes and interactive exercises, links, Internet worksheets and messageboards.

DIALANG offers validated tests of different language skills, together with a range of feedback and expert advice on how to improve your skills. It also offers scientifically validated self-assessment activities and allows users to determine their language level, strengths and weaknesses as well as to increase their awareness of current skills and of what it means to know a language. It has been developed by more than 20 major European institutions, with the backing of the European Commission and is based on the Council of Europe's "Common European Framework of reference", which has become established throughout Europe as the most widely recognized frame of reference in the field of language learning.

Authorware: The GISMO Project (Guildhall Interactive Software for Multimedia Online)
A selection of teaching materials produced by The Department of Humanities, Arts and Languages at London Metropolitan University using the authoring program developed within the department that allows language teachers to prepare their own audio-enhanced websites containing a variety of interactive exercises. Any educational institution is welcome to use this material.
The software combines the ability to edit your own text and then to record someone reading it, all using the same program. The sound and text are then automatically integrated and a web page containing the exercises is generated.

French: E-pack (sample)
These materials represent a sample of the interactive online exercises developed at London Metropolitan University for beginners in French. The exercises combine sound, image and text in a single activity and provide instant feedback. They cover the main language learning skills of listening, reading, writing and grammar and involve a variety of activities, such as matching, reordering and games.

French: Reading French 2000
A web-based independent learning course for French for students at the University of Calgary but freely accessible to anyone who wishes to study the course autonomously and online.

French grammar question bank
This bank of over 1,000 questions was created using Question Mark Perception. It was aimed at first year Undergraduate students of French. The grammar topics covered include possessive adjectives, partitive articles, demonstrative adjectives and pronouns, relative pronouns, direct and indirect object pronouns and verb tenses. Question types are either Selection (student chooses correct item from drop-down list) or Fill in Blanks. All questions have minimum feedback of correct answer; many have differentiated feedback and marking. The questions have been drawn mainly from GramEx French or devised using the Astcovea French concordancer. The bank can be used by institutions running Question Mark Perception to create diagnostic, formative or summative tests.

French: Listening comprehension - Club Méditerranée - transcription exercise
This is an audio transcription exercise aimed at first year Undergraduate French students. The recording gives information on the holiday firm Club Méditerranée and the kind of clients it attracts. There are buttons on screen which the user can click at any time to hear the whole recording or a short section of it. The user is advised to begin by listening to the whole recording at least once without trying to type anything, and then to listen section by section, typing what they s/he has heard. The user is allowed 3 attempts at each section, after which the work is checked for mistakes and automatically marked. The "Show Answer" button brings up the correct response and allows the user to proceed without scoring any points. During the course of the exercise the full correct transcript is compiled on the right of the screen.
This exercise was created using Authorware. Provided the resources are in the same folder, double clicking the file '3clubmed' should launch the programme.

French: for beginners and general French grammar
Interactive exercises for French created using 'Interactive Language Learning Authorware' designed by Steve Cushion, Guildhall University. The materials come in two files (A and B) which are compressed files that can be self-extracted by clicking on them. The programs run using a web browser and can be started by clicking on the 'home' icon.

French: Online language resources for intermediate/advanced learners
The French language exercises available on this site consists of sentences for translation, grammar and vocabulary exercises which were originally designed for students on a second year French language course at the University of Portsmouth. They contain grammar difficulties and a variety of vocabulary and idiomatic expressions drawn from articles studied in class. They enabled students to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.
The external links are grouped by the following categories:
Grammaire, Dictionnaires/Glossaires, Traduction and Liens Utiles.

French: Difficultés de la langue française
This 2-semester grammar course is essentially geared towards English Learners of French and is intended to improve students' writing skills. Its main aim is to improve writing accuracy at noun phrase and sentence level; nevertheless, it also aims to strengthen students writing techniques and text-production/text-transformation skills through a review of linguistic processes of pronominalisation. It originated from the observation (i.e. via several error analyses conducted between 1997 and 1999) that foreign learners of French recurrently make particular mistakes when they write and that this is often due to a lack of grammatical knowledge. Thus, it is hypothesised that these mistakes can be avoided thanks to an introduction to/a revision of basic grammatical concepts (i.e. What is a Part of Speech? What is a Grammatical Function? What do Gender and Number mean? Etc). Further, though the course mainly focuses on writing skills, register differences, and in particular stylistic differences between written and oral expression, will also be underlined. Finally, this programme also reviews central difficulties linked to the choice and use of tenses in French (second semester).

News item

Prospect/Franco-British Council creative writing prize
Win a trip to France and cash prizes!
Prizes will be awarded to sixth formers and university students (aged 16-25) for a short story inspired by France and the French. The winning pieces will also appear in Prospect and the best contributions will be included in an exciting new collection of work to be published by the Franco-British Council.

Web Guide (GPG)

Using parallel corpora in translation
Parallel corpora are large collections of texts in two languages. They can be used for teaching and research in translation, bilingual lexicography, and linguistics.

Hidden merits of the translation class
This paper discusses a unit of a BA course at Birkbeck College, London in 'translation from and into French’. It considers what transferable skills and knowledge can be developed through such a course, as well as the many issues that translators have to deal with.

Empty-headed linguists? French undergraduates and learning transfer
This study describes an attempt to encourage some advanced learners of French as a foreign language (A-level plus two years) at Anglia Polytechnic University (APU) to develop some strategies and skills applicable both to language learning and to other knowledge domains. We examine what happened during a three-week learning and teaching sequence; we re-examine the principles and assumptions on which the teaching was based; and we draw conclusions pertinent to attempts to achieve similar ends, at APU and perhaps elsewhere. Our title is a wry reference to the stereotype, common within British Higher Education, of foreign language proficiency as a mere skill requiring only low-level cognitive activity.